Preview

A. E. Stallings's Poem 'The Mistake'

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
654 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A. E. Stallings's Poem 'The Mistake'
The very thing that can ruin my day, is something that my children absolutely love but oh how I hate that little thing. A.E. Stallings poem “The Mistake” is a short poem about the one thing that I absolutely cannot stand, dandelions. The joy that comes with that little puffball of white as you blow those spores into the wind and watch them dance away. How soothing they are to watch, until later when there are more of them than there are of you. Sometimes the smallest things turn out to be the biggest problem. In this poem, the narrator is talking about how they released a dandelion seed into the wind. It was so simple it didn’t even take much effort at all, “just opening up my hand”. Once it was gone there was nothing more to think about it. Until the following spring when the yard was full of dandelions. It was just something so small, nothing really at all just a split second and it was out of the narrator’s control. It wasn’t anything to be concerned with, how much could it really hurt. Then comes the day when …show more content…
Everyone has plucked a dandelion and blew it in the wind never thinking about the consequences of that action. It is the same with mistakes made in life where it isn’t big or obvious instead it is something small or something that was quick. Later though that small thing comes around again and now you must face it and deal with the problem or it just keeps coming back. The dandelions in the end of the poem “bloomed and closed, and opened up, and blew” The problem didn’t just show up and then go away, instead it continued the ugly cycle of replicating itself. That little white lie that continues to grow until the story is so convoluted that one can’t even remember what the truth really was. That little thing that took on a life of its own, when you didn’t deal with it when you never thought you would deal with it

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    A.E Stallings poem "Ajar" is about two people who are not speaking to each other after a fight. The poem has a very calm almost passive tone even though the couple is fighting. To tell the story of the couple the speaker uses rhymes. Each line rhymes with the next such as " Whatever the gods forbid, it’s sure someone will do, And so Pandora did and made the worst come true." In these two lines, there are two rhymes, the poem maintains that same rhythm throughout the whole poem.…

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The poem begins by undercutting the beautiful, pleasant imagery promised by the title through the terse bluntness of the “dusk, and cold.” Flowers are indeed present as the title suggests, but only “frail, melancholy” ones, gathered by the subservient act of “kneeling” among “ashes and loam”. There is a definite sense of ending – both of the day, and of something grander. The persona’s attempts at engaging with the natural world are crudely rebuffed – she cannot succeed in her musical engagement, merely “try”, which results only in an “indifferent” blackbird “fret[ting] and strop[ing]” under “Ambiguous light. Ambiguous sky.” This unfriendly environment in which the poem begins foregrounds the sense of loss which characterises so much of Harwood’s poetry, an inevitable, confronting finality emphasised by the bluntness of the language and plethora of full stops. The adult world presented here is one of uncertainty, difficulty and ambiguity.…

    • 1334 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    16. Linda Hogan utilizes a whimsical, yet humble tone when she observes the creature blossoming under the soil. She “wonders how a cut blade of grass knows how to turn sharp again at the end” conveying her curiosity similar to a child’s. To wonder is to observe and and question, just like a child. By confessing that she is “not aware yet of what [she] will become” reveals the uncertainty of the future, and compares herself to the unexposed, “blind” creature in the ground.…

    • 291 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator has a swirl of emotions and leaves the house, building on her jealousy for hope. She has no clue where she is going or what she is doing and then an idea hits her, she feels the urge to destroy the marigolds, to take away the hope they seems impossible and misplaced. One day the narrator stomps and smashes the marigolds the reality hits her, this had helped no one, destroying the hope of others, all that ruining the marigolds did was to bring the narrator to a realization ofher childish actions,that she was an adult, and should act like one. That she should create hope for herself and her family by being mature, sophisticated, and helping her parents, not destroy the hope that others had so dearly cared for. She realizes that the old lady had worked hard to nurture and grow her hope, her joy, her marigolds, that destroying them was wrong, and it brought no one else any hope, it just took someone's away. Her childish actions of rebellion had left her. The lines “ and they was the moment that childhood faded and womanhood began. The violent, crazy act was the last act of childhood. For as I gazed at the immobile face with sat and weary eyes, I gazed upon a kind of reality that is hidden to childhood. The witch was no longer a witch but only a lonely old woman who dared to create beauty in the midst so of ugliness and sterility. She had been born in squalor and lived in it all her life ow at the end of tent life she nothing but a falling down hut” communicate these…

    • 1027 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A tree cannot grow new leaves unless the dead leaves are gone first, and in the first stanza as the “gentle gardener” shakes the tree “with a strange passion,” the gardener’s act seems threatening and violent, but in reality, he does this out of strong affection for it. From there on, the tree is left empty, and Chang links this independent growth of a tree to a time in his own life when he felt alone, described in the second stanza as “the lost river of my existence.” He feels “lost” because he has been abandoned, but one has to hit rock bottom before being able to grow from the experience and move on. In the end, the tree “glowed again with golden leaves,” showing the success of the tree to thrive again on its own, just as the gardener intended from the start. Like the tree, the speaker realizes that he is able to move on as well.…

    • 1180 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Deviner demonstrates the characteristic of thinking too little quite a bit in his poem. Thinking too little when writing a poem is usually when the poet uses pointless repetition and the incorrect use of vocabulary. These mistakes leave the reader questioning the poet’s language in the poem causing confusion and uncertainty. This characteristic makes the reader uncertain of what is going on, which makes the poem a source of bad poetry. From the lines “Perhaps I secretly wish to see her fall/ Sucked in by the collective grasp of the crowd/I long to witness this free fall/ how easy it is to fall” Ken U. Deviner is proved to be making mistakes by being very repetitive. He has used the same word (fall), three times when it is not necessary to do so. He also attempts to use different words to try and say the same message. For these reasons, Ken U Deviner’s poem “Safety Net” is not a good poem since the characteristic of thinking too little is identified and was not…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Known CPR The Right Way One thing that ever person on earth should know is Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR).A person will never know when or were it my come in to use. A lot of people say that they know how to give CPR but, most of them will not give it in the create way or will panic and freeze up when the time comes. Hopefully this course will teach you the create process in CPR training. Hopefully you will never need to perform CPR but if you do you will now have the skills to save someone life. Check the victim for pulse or look to see if the victim chest is moving. If there is no response, Call 911 and return to the victim. In most locations the emergency dispatcher can assist you with CPR instructions. Tilt the head back and listen for the victim breath. If not breathing normally, pinch nose and cover the mouth with yours and blow until you see the chest rise. Give 2 breaths. Each breath should take 2 seconds. If the victim is still not breathing normally, coughing or moving, begin chest compression's. Put one hand on top of the other and enter lock them then proceed by pushdown on the chest 11/2 to 2 inches 15 times right between the nipples. Pump at the rate of100/minute, faster than once per second. CPR for children is similar to performing CPR on a adults. There are, however, 4 differences. If you are alone with the child give one minute of CPR before calling 911.Use the heel of one hand for chest compression's. Press the sternum down 1 to 1.5 inches. Give 1 full breath followed by 5 chest compression's. Shout and gently tap the child on the shoulder. If there is no response, position the infant on his or her back. Open the airway using a head tilt lifting of chin. Do not tilt the head too far back. If the baby is NOT breathing give 2 small gentle breaths. Cover the baby's mouth and nose with your mouth. Each breath should be 1.5 to 2 seconds long. You should see the baby's chest rise with each breath. Give five gentle chest compression's at the rate…

    • 695 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As the poem went on, it seemed to shift from youthful optimism to the realities of being an adult and crushing their youthful optimism. From line ten to the end it takes about the speaker’s home life and it seems like they aren’t aware of the reality around them. Their father had gotten out of the hospital and they didn’t seem sympathetic towards him, the speaker seemed to focus on the fact that they got to move into a new house and didn’t have to live in an apartment anymore. “We’d moved / from the apartment over the store / into a house with a front door. / I wanted people to ring the bell / and I’d answer it like on TV.” (ll 16-20). The speakers father has just been brought home and all they can focus on is opening the door like the people…

    • 604 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It begins with a bit of a hopeful and peaceful tone. The first lie states, “ Nature’s first green is gold”. This relates to a person’s childhood potentially being the best time of their life. The poem gets somber a little while later when talking about how quickly childhood can fade away. Lines five through eight of the poem say, “Then leaf subsides to leaf, So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay.” The idea that many people take away from this is that as you grow older, life becomes more and more difficult, so your childhood should be cherished. This is surely a motto to live…

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This portion of the poem exemplifies how easily relationships grow apart with time and the toll it takes on an individual.…

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Nothing Gold Can Stay

    • 2076 Words
    • 9 Pages

    In life, you will have items and people you love without a doubt. However, through lines such as “Then leaf subsides to leaf” and “So dawn goes down to day”, you can tell that these beloved aspects of your life are blessings that come and go. Sometimes people might die, treasured items may get lost or break, etc. In a similar aspect, the poem also can mean that nothing will BE the same after things change. Your opinion of things, the way you view others, can change, especially with age.…

    • 2076 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Even when I am gone, I shall remain in people's minds the star of their rights, my name will be the war cry of their efforts, the motto of their hopes,” as said by Napoleon Bonaparte about himself and glory (Moore). But how did Napoleon get into power, what was his role in the French Revolution, what were his first tasks once he did get into power, and what was his legacy? Napoleon Bonaparte was a very influential man with a very interesting history. One very interesting thing is that napoleon was very young for one who gained power as quickly as he did, but in turbulent times such as the French Revolution it was easy for a man with great ambition to rise through the ranks. Since 1792 France had been at war with itself and many other European countries, and by 1796, just four years later, Napoleon was in command of a large French army (Napoleon Bonaparte).…

    • 696 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Poetry Essay

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Williams uses irony and imagery from the beginning of this literature. It is ironic that the character has to experience so much grief and heart ache during such a beautiful season as spring. The visual imagery that he has created gives the reader a compassionate view to the wife’s emotional grief while surrounding her with a fountain of newly born life. The sharpness of the white flowers is in stark contrast to her cloudy and dark feelings. Everything is coming to life as she feels her life cannot go on without her husband.…

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Concert Report

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages

    I attended the fall concert for the Northwest’s Symphony Orchestra on the night of November 13, 2012 at HMLA. They played a number of pieces including a piece with a soloist from a tremendous flute player. Personally, sitting through this concert though was torture from a musical standpoint. Their first piece started right away not together in the brass section and didn’t improve through the night. Once the strings section came in, very soon they weren’t together either along with their bowing being off as well. This could easily be put on the fact that there was hardly any eye contact with the conductor from the players. The dynamics were inexistent in the pieces; I heard a difference in the volume of their playing once or twice in all their pieces. Even the tone quality wasn’t all that impressive as frequently the violins would squeak or the brass wavering in their notes. They really didn’t have much coming from them all night. Coming from a high school Orchestra, I felt the skill level not only didn’t improve, but actually lowered. One of the pieces they played, we played my freshman year in high school and they still struggled with that piece.…

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the first line of the second stanza, there is a metaphor in, "thousands of them, little knots." The narrator relates in this line the thousands of guilt feelings to the knots that you can't "shake loose" because they are very tight and there are thousands of them tied together. She experiences shock and guilt as she says, "whenever you think / you are not a bad person, there / they come, little lumps of guilt." In these lines, she describes how big burdens of guilt never leave you and come up to you whenever you think you are not a bad person. There is a metaphor in, "little lumps of guilt." The narrator compares the big burdens of guilt to lumps likes tumors or other swellings in the body. In the last line of the poem, there is a simile in, "like doctors, keeping you sick." The narrator uses personification to compare the feelings of guilt to doctors who are keeping you sick. Because she describes the feelings of guilt as lumps in your body that can never be cured, doctors will keep saying that you are sick. There might be a positive sign about this statement in that we are supposed to carry those feelings of guilt with us and the lump or tumor that is being carried around is a benign tumor. Carrying this lump around with us allows us to own up to and learn from our mistakes. It gives us a…

    • 670 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays